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Any Twitter user can now access the Twitter Ads dashboard, click "Analytics" and gain insight into referral traffic, mentions, tweets and retweets. "All of the information is shown in a clear and accessible format so that every user, regardless of whether they're the marketing manager of an international conglomerate or an emerging blogger with just a handful of followers, can analyze and take action based on the data," Nick Summers writes.

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Twitter says it will halt its agreements with third-party data sellers, and instead market its user data to brands via an in-house analytics team. "Direct relationships help Twitter develop a deeper understanding of customer needs, get direct feedback for the product roadmap, and work more closely with data customers to enable the best possible solutions for the brands that rely on Twitter data," Twitter's Zach Hofter-Shall wrote in a blog post.

Some Twitter users are seeking to undermine brands' paid social media efforts by engaging with or sharing branded content in an ironic and subversive way. Those users retweet Promoted Tweets and other messaging along with surreal, nonsensical or ungrammatical comments, a nod to the so-called "Weird Twitter" subculture that can also potentially drive up the cost of advertising on the platform. Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser describes the movement as part of "the eternal battle people have over hipsterdom," and says the network is careful not to bill brands for ironic or fake retweets.

Zeppelin is now offering businesses a beta-version iOS analytics application as a complement to its Web-based dashboard, giving executives on the move a look at their Google Analytics and MailChimp feeds, for example. "The app itself does what you would expect, showing the same data that the desktop web-dashboard shows, along with the activity stream users should already be familiar with," Alex Wilhelm writes.

About a year after buying word-of-mouth-marketing company BzzAgent, marketing analytics company Dunnhumby USA has released BzzAgent Pulse, a dashboard that combines data from both companies. The dashboard, which Unilever helped Dunnhumby design, aims to help brands bring accountability to social media and world-of-mouth-marketing efforts.

Twitter is piloting a version of its timeline that expands to allow inline viewing of conversations, tweeted media and retweets. Hovering over a tweet produces an "open" button that expands the timeline to reveal who has retweeted the message, along with the entire conversation thread. Some users report having access to the feature, but Twitter has yet to comment.